US Congress

16 results arranged by date

The
State Department released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights this week.
In preparing this year's reports, Foggy Bottom had to comply for the first time
with the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act. Signed into law in May 2010,
the Pearl Act requires descriptions, identifications, and assessments of press freedom conditions, including whether "severe violations" have
occurred and "whether government authorities" have been complicit in
press freedom violations. As I note in a blog in TheHill.com,
though, the State Department's first attempt falls short, providing too little context
and assessment.

April 15, 2011 5:23 PM ET

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Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Pakistani Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani on September 22 to express concern about the brutal attack on Umar Cheema. The journalist was abducted on the weekend of September 4-5 by men in black
commando-style uniforms, who beat and humiliated him. It's a case I've written about repeatedly (you can find links here,here,
here,
here,
here,
and here). But the prime minister has not yet responded to Lugar's letter, which was delivered through the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

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UPDATE, OCTOBER 22, 2010: CPJ's board of directors sets policy for the organization. At the October 18 meeting of the board, directors discussed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, known as COICA.

The September 30 blog post below incorrectly stated that CPJ had "joined with other press freedom and civil liberty organizations and the Internet's pioneering engineers to urge the U.S. Senate to reject COICA in its current form." After discussion, the board determined that CPJ should take no position on the proposed legislation at this time. The matter was referred to the CPJ policy committee for further review.

This week, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill
shielding journalists and publishers from “libel tourism.” The vote on Monday
slipped past the Washington press corps largely unnoticed. Maybe it was the
title that strove chunkily for a memorable acronym: the Securing the Protection
of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH)
Act. Journalists and press freedom defenders outside the United States did,
however, pay attention to the legislation, which they hope will spur libel law
reform in their countries.

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Kazakhstan, the
current chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, has
failed to live up to its press freedom commitments, CPJ’s Muzaffar Suleymanov told the Congressional Helsinki
Commission in Washington today.

A bill pending in the Russian parliament would give state
security alarming new censorship powers, CPJ’s Nina Ognianova told the Congressional
Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission in testimony in
Washington today. During a hearing on human rights issues in Russia, Ognianova also voiced concern about continued
impunity in journalist murders.

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For more than two years, U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin and a group of Senate colleagues have been pressing for the release
of Gambian journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, left. In July 2006, security agents arrested
Manneh at his workplace at the Daily
Observer and have since held him incommunicado and without charge. On
Thursday, Durbin and four other senators sent a letter to Kamalesh Sharma, secretary-general
of the Commonwealth of Nations, urging him to
launch an investigation into the case.

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Free press advocates in Britain are looking to a bill stuck in the U.S.
Congress for moral support in the fight to reform England’s draconian defamation laws.
The U.S. bill, the Free Speech
Protection Act 2009, is itself the product of those laws, which have made London the capital of “libel tourism.”

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This week CPJ congratulated the House sponsors of a bill
that would expand the breadth and depth of the State Department's annual
reporting to Congress on press freedom abuses worldwide. The Daniel Pearl
Freedom of the Press Act passed
the House last month; now the bill is being redrafted for the Senate by the
Committee on Foreign Relations. CPJ, in the July 8 letter to Reps. Adam Schiff
(D-CA) and Mick Pence (R-IN), who are also co-chairs of the Congressional
Caucus for Freedom of the Press, urged the Senate to pass the legislation appropriately
named after the late Wall Street Journal reporter.

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"Information is power, which is
precisely why many governments attempt to control the press to suppress
opposition and preempt dissent," said U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California
Democrat who three years ago founded the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of
the Press. "Far too often, the reporters and editors who demand reform,
accountability, and transparency find themselves at risk," he went on. "The
censorship, intimidation, imprisonment, and murder of these journalists are not
only crimes against these individuals, but they also impact those who are
denied access to their ideas and information."